Amritsar, April 17 (). A video is going viral in which Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC) staffers are preventing a woman tourist with a tattoo of the national flag on her face from entering the Golden Temple, also known as Harmandir Sahib.
The woman claimed that she was denied entry because of her tricolor tattoo. The sevadar, an SGPC employee who was denied entry, when the woman said it was the Indian flag, was reportedly heard saying that it was Punjab, not India.
In the 40-second video clip, two men accompanying the woman can be heard asking the guard, “Is the Golden Temple not in India?” When asked why the woman was not allowed to enter the holy shrine, he pointed to the flag drawn on the woman’s face. The guard also tried to prevent the woman and her accompanying persons from capturing the incident on their phones.
SGPC General Secretary Gurcharan Grewal apologized for the misbehavior by his staff and told the media that it was a Sikh pilgrimage site. Every religious place has its own limits. We welcome everyone. We apologize if any officer has misbehaved. The flag on his face was not our national flag because it did not have the Ashoka Chakra. It could have been a political flag.
Criticizing people for criticizing SGPC on social media, he said, don’t these people know that Sikhs played a big role in India’s independence? Will someone tweet who sacrificed 90 out of 100 heads for the national flag? Sikhs are being deliberately maligned.
KC/ANM
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